


There Came the Sound of Thunder

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s03e16 No Rest for the Wicked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:37:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembered his brother’s name more then twice as long as he remembered his own. [Dean, No Rest for the Wicked] </p>
            </blockquote>





	There Came the Sound of Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ 6/6/2008

He remembered the first time he’d heard it, back when he still remembered who he was. The demon curling around his shoulders and hissing black words dipped in poison into his ears:  
  
“Your brother’s coming.”  
  
They left him alone for days after that and those three words rang around and around in his head until they start to take on a different meaning. He had always believed his brother was coming, but the longer they left him alone, suspended by meat hooks, surrounded by nothing, the more he started to worry. The demon had sounded positively gleeful to hear of his brother’s arrival.   
  
He didn’t want his brother coming into a trap. Not even if he meant him getting out.  
  
So when the demon came back for the new round of horrors, he was still screaming his brother’s name but it wasn’t a plea for help anymore. It was a warning.

________________________________________________________________________

  
  
The second time he’d heard it, he’d forgotten what he looked like, what if felt like to have only working limbs, what his voice sounded like when it wasn’t screaming.  
  
“Your brother’s coming,” hissed the demon, curling its clawed hand over his shoulder and yanking back viciously.   
  
“Sam!” he screamed. “Sam!”  
  
“Your brother’s coming,” repeated the demon, a forked tongue flickering in and out of its vile mouth.   
  
“Sam,” he sobbed. “Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam.”  
  
He remembered his brother’s name more then twice as long as he remembered his own. 

________________________________________________________________________

  
  
The meaning of words faded, blurred into nothing but abstract sounds. He could still summon pictures if he tried hard enough, pictures of a burning funeral pyre and a pair of ghoulish yellow eyes and the spell of gunpowder and a face with floppy hair and dark eyes but no name. Hundreds of tiny snatches from a life that didn’t matter anymore.  
  
“Your brother’s coming,” the demon said.   
  
He felt like the words should mean something, like they meant something once, like they meant hope once. There’s nothing left now.   
  
“Your brother’s coming.”  
  
He wondered when the foreign sentiment had started to fill him with dread.

________________________________________________________________________

  
  
“Your brother’s coming.”  
  
The words came with torture. With red-hot pokers and meat hooks and vats of lava and demons that peeled his skin like oranges.  
  
Your brother’s coming. Your brother’s coming. Yourbrother’scoming.   
  
He screamed.

________________________________________________________________________

  
  
“Your brother’s coming,” the demon told him gleefully.   
  
Complete and utter dread filled him as he cracked open bloodshot eyes. He remembered this particular string of words, and if he strained long enough he could summon up an image of a twisted face and a mass of hair. He could see demons, thousands of them, it seemed all waiting for something, for someone.   
  
He stiffened in fright. The only thing any newcomer had ever brought to his world was more pain. And the demons, they seemed to be cowering, half in fear, half in awe of the new presence. He lifted his chin because that one shred of defiance was the one thing they hadn’t beaten from him yet.   
  
“Dean,” the thing in front of him said. “Dean, it’s me.”  
  
He looked at the man in front of him, took in the great frame hunkered down to his level. He winced at the gentle touch of a hand on his face. “It’s Sam. It’s your brother.”  
  
 _Your brother’s coming,_  whispered a demon from the depths of his memory and he fought the sudden surging panic that coursed through his veins. This was bad. He knew it intrinsically and no matter how beaten he was his first urge was always to fight.  
  
“Stop struggling,” Sam said. “Look at me.”  
  
The words, though utterly foreign seemed to have a hold over him and he obeyed. He could not do anything but obey.  
  
He’d seen the face before, but he couldn’t remember where. Still, he thought there didn’t used to be a scar through his cheek. He thought this man’s eyes didn’t used to be white. He thought they used to be brown. He thought...  
  
“It’s time to go now, Dean,” Sam said.   
  
Sam raised a hand and the world split in front of him. The sickly green-gray giving way to a dark sky and heavy rain coming down in sheets. Somewhere deep in the distance, in another world, there came the sound of thunder. “Let’s go, Dean.”  
  
He thought that might be his name. Just like he thought this might be his brother. Just like he thought this might be real.   
  
He let himself be gently lifted from the hooks, stumbling a step until Sam slipped an arm under his shoulder and lead him to the split between worlds.  
  
And he tried not to think about why his brother’s eyes had gone white or the way Hell followed them out, seeping into the real world like they were both the same.


End file.
